| 2007 Toyota Tundra left Rear View
A couple issues ago, we gave an '07 Toyota Tundra a Fantastic Four transformation but the story doesn't end there. The Tundra belongs to Thor-not the god, but the maker of riding gear for the motocross market. It's a company with an epic reputation in the moto market that wanted a truck with a little urban flavor to flash its logo around town. Not wanting to settle for a vinyl wrap or similarly easy solution, Thor tapped the painters at Kelly & Son in Bellflower, California.Kelly & Son made the truck available to us for the Fantastic Four makeover. After that, Kelly & Son gave us the heads up about the truck's pending paintjob, so we thought we would shoot some pics. So here we are, with a paint tech story for you.
| 2007 Toyota Tundra right Side View
At first, we were skeptical of Kelly & Son's choice of colors for this project. Mitch Kelly mixed Crystal Black with Silver Star, both from PPG's Vibrance Collection, to get various shades of gray and silver, and kept some of the factory Tundra black. These are three colors one wouldn't expect to explode from the page ... but, this is the paint shop that gave us the candy orange and black Project Intimidator that we ran in our paint and body issue. Mitch Kelly and the rest of the guys at Kelly & Son-Tom, Jon, Shaggy, Brandon, and Jesse-are no slouches. Everyone involved made black, silver, and gray look pretty-darn good. Here's how they did it.
| 2007 Toyota Tundra tailgate Thor
This was a routine project for Kelly & Son. It was amazing to see what could be done with gray, silver, and black. Mitch applied multiple layers of different shades, while checking them as he went along in order to manipulate the colors. If you know what you are doing, we suppose a paintjob like this isn't horribly difficult to execute, and fewer colors and less intricate graphics made the design of this paintjob easier. It's a great project for a shop that is on the go.
YOUR QUESTIONS ANSWERED Time Spent Working: 20 hours Mechanical Difficulty Advanced Tools Used: A paint booth, a Sata spray gun, Kaeser air compressor for the spray gun, respirator masks, Quickcut sanders, 600-grit paper, Scotch-Brite pads, rolls of 18-inch-wide paper, masking tape, and handtools.
Coatings Used:PPG Vibrance Silver Star Basecoat 908418PPG Vibrance Crystal Black 908419PPG 41010 ClearPPG 3520 Hardener
Total Cost: $6,500 (paint and labor)
